Econet launches eTXT, erases line between SMS and the Internet

M liking the eTxt service but at times it takes forever to fetch emails…

The service is quite okay, but such services should not be a quick fix to the internet disparities existing in the country. This etext service is an archaic invention and when such technologies are dumped into zimbabwe it means someone wants to reap someone as archaic technologies are reproduced to swindle us our monies. Myself I send close to fifty emails per day, my notifications, chats messages run into hundreds and if I am to use this etext service I will go broke since the service sets me back 7c per message. Apart from that this service is going to damage people eyes and thumbs as they try to clear their conversations loops. Its sad that when we expect Econet to launch services as voip and webtv they are taking us down memory land.

sending an email via sms in 2011 does not make sense. it could have made sense if we were in the early or late 2000. Who would want to be charged 7 cents to send an email?

thats true, if yourself you were charged 7 cents per message you might have gone broke by now, yet you are much more financial secure than the rural folk who you want to adopt the platform. The thing is that people will have the internet which they might not be able to use because of cost and the technlogy will be sort of some top to bottom platform which will be weak on interchange. I told my friend in Chipinge to sign up for the service and I had been sending him stories from the web and over the past week and at first he liked it but right now he is now asking me to remove him from some alerts and stuff like that. He told me that his battery wasn’t lasting much and the MORE 100 procedure is frustrating.

“it blurs the line of what it means to be connected to the internet.” A bit of some classic media sensationalism there!

Econ$t

seems like some guys here value technology so much and think that any new invention is is a great product. if i was to ask what benefit one gets from using facebook, no one will properly answer that, sometimes these technologies need to be interrogated in understanding whether they have any benefit as newness is not ingenuity. we are still to know whether the prior service launched by econet called infotext, some of you dont even know it, whether it did help people as was said during its launch.

we may not be able to exhaustively discuss the usefulness of Facebook here. But one indication Facebook is not useless is the number of companies locally beginning to have some corporate presence on Facebook. There must be something attracting them there, no?

Here is what i was able to do a few days ago to save my $ on responding to facebook chats sent to my mobile via sms (econet etxt service). I own an aging htc touch pro which is internet capable. It runs windows mobile 6.1 (ancient by global standards). I have an app store on my phone called omarket (you can google and download this with ease). I searched on the omarket for an application that could allow me to sent and receive facebook and gtalk chats via the internet. I found dozens of such apps. I looked for those with good review reports and stumbled apon one called palringo. This app allows u to do both your facebook and gtalk chats as long as u are connected to the net. Ok its not 100% free but here is the good part.

I did an experiment and juiced up my fully charged phone with $1. I do not use this phone for voice calls, its solely for my mobile net. I was able to spend the whole day responding to dozens and dozens of chats (hundreds of sms could be possible). I kept checking for the balance, well on a 3 decimal balance of my airtime, it was only the last digit that was moving (1/1000 of a dollar). At times it was just fixed. What really really got me impressed was the phone was pretty cool all the time so my battery was not being drained (skype makes my phone warm and at times almost hot). Not all the airtime was being used up for chat, a small but reasonable amount of airtime was used up by palringo application to maintain its internet connectivity but i was able to finish the whole 14 hours on a $1 and on top i made 2 skype calls. So hey we can still beat econet at its pricing-madness game!!! Lets do It!!

Ok, maybe the title does shout a bit too much. You got me. We’re excited about the many possibilities this brings!

me moving over to this network.its innovative

The service is absolute trash as is witnessed by its low adoption. It is no different from Unix’s V editor and expecting my grandma to use it is banal. It is only fit for the rubbish bin mark my words.